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More on the IP Detail Record (IPDR)

IPDR may be just the beginning of the measurements that will be performed by the cable ISPs. Our traffic information may be open for uses we did not expect. The ISPs may sell this traffic information as another revenue producer.In my previous blog, "CDR, SMDR and Now IPDR," I discussed the possibilities of the IPDR usage. There appears to be even more to this story than I thought. Cisco was awarded a patent on December 17, 2009, "Seeding search engine crawlers using intercepted network traffic". This patent is designed to overcome the problem that search engine crawlers cannot index sites that the search engine does know about. The patent covers crawlers in "routers, multilayer switches and any other suitable devices" such as cable modems. Cisco could add this capability to their Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTS) products and expand the IPDR with a proprietary extension.

The TM Forum site provides the following overview of the Internet Protocol Detail Record technology:

Usage Data Management for IP-based Services Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) technology enables the collection of metrics on user behavior and simplifies integration of third-party applications. Service usage may be monitored and analyzed in order to bill a subscriber for their consumption (e.g., bandwidth used) or to manage service consumption, abusers of acceptable use policy, Quality of Service, or Quality of Experience.

IPDR provides information about IP-based service usage, performance, and other activities as cost-effective, application-agnostic usage measurements and exchange requirements. IPDR's flexibility is critical for next-generation services, whose usage requirements are difficult to predict and which may use a variety of complex accounting models. IPDR allows the operator to monitor service patterns and usage and to establish differentiated services or service levels, such as with different SLAs or prices.

IPDR has applicability for capacity management, traffic analysis, user trending, revenue assurance, billing, digital advertising, and other use cases currently under exploration by TM Forum's Cable Interest Group.

IPDR records are created by cable modems, enhanced multimedia terminal adapters, set-top boxes, and other devices and are used by OSS and BSS applications. The IPDR specifications provide more robust data than can be captured with other standards.

The IPDR specifications include

* Requirements for IPDR collection and encoding, and transport protocols to exchange IPDR records

* IPDR service specification design guidance

* Sample IPDR Service Definition Documents

CableLabs has adopted IPDR/SP as a mandatory part of DOCSIS (Data over Cable Service Interface Specification) and OpenCable. Other adoptions of IPDR have been made by ATIS, ANSI, SCTE, JCP, 3GPP, and ITU.

IPDR provides information about IP-based service usage, performance, and other activities as cost-effective, application-agnostic usage measurements and exchange requirements. IPDR's flexibility is critical for next-generation services, whose usage requirements are difficult to predict and which may use a variety of complex accounting models. IPDR allows the operator to monitor service patterns and usage and to establish differentiated services or service levels, such as with different SLAs or prices.

IPDR has applicability for capacity management, traffic analysis, user trending, revenue assurance, billing, digital advertising, and other use cases currently under exploration by TM Forum's Cable Interest Group.

IPDR records are created by cable modems, enhanced multimedia terminal adapters, set-top boxes, and other devices and are used by OSS and BSS applications. The IPDR specifications provide more robust data than can be captured with other standards.

The IPDR specifications include

* Requirements for IPDR collection and encoding, and transport protocols to exchange IPDR records

* IPDR service specification design guidance

* Sample IPDR Service Definition Documents

CableLabs has adopted IPDR/SP as a mandatory part of DOCSIS (Data over Cable Service Interface Specification) and OpenCable. Other adoptions of IPDR have been made by ATIS, ANSI, SCTE, JCP, 3GPP, and ITU.

A useful article is: "Service Management with IPDR Rationale and Use Cases," published in Communications Technology", January 1, 2009, by Jeff Finkelstein, Cox, and Jason Schnitzer of Applied Broadband.

Here are the IPDR benefits to the cable provider that will probably mean higher bills in the future:

* Deploy usage based billing.

* Monitor the usage patterns to increase revenue.

* Bill for next generation IP based services with short development.

* Differentiate pricing and performance (SLAs) of the service offerings such as IPTV, VoIP, streaming media, public WLAN access as well as regular Internet traffic.

* Identify AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) abusers.

The cable provider can use the IPDR to offer many different pricing and billing options:

* Flat rate like in today's pricing * Flat rate based on bandwidth level * Charges by data usage volume * Charge by application * Pay Per view billing * Time based billing * Number of devices attached * Number of users connecting

The range of billing choices will make it harder to compare the cost that the customer will have to absorb. By creating different combinations of billing rules, the ISPs can create pricing confusion. We're already seeing the effects of pricing confusion in other enterprise services today, for example the pricing structures for MPLS services, which make it difficult to compare MPLS providers.

My conclusions are:

*

* The ISPs will collect far more information than is collected now.

* The ISPS will use this information to target customers.

* The ISPs may also use the information to favor or limit content distributors.

* The information collected can be used by the ISPs to compete with Google, Yahoo, Bing and others in targeted advertising.

* The information collected will be about both residential and enterprise customers, producing even less privacy than we have today.

* The Net Neutrality arguments may be expanded to include traffic and URL information and its dissemination.